Post navigation

Danville Public Libary is hosting a new exhibit and presentation titled “Mapping Local Knowledge: Danville, Va., 1963 — The Movement, The People, The Stories” which examines the 1963 civil rights movement in Danville through the perspectives of ten participants. The presentation begins at 5:30pm on July 11, 2013. The exhibit runs from July 1-31, 2013. Audience members are allowed to share their photos and stories of their experiences during this time in history. For more information call Diane Moore at 434-799-5195, ext. 3.

In support of this year’s theme, “Civil Rights in Education,” Sweet Briar College’s Teaching with Primary Sources workshop will focus on the Robert Russa Moton School in Farmville, where students played a significant role in protesting educational segregation. One of the speakers will be Justin Reid, the associate director of the fully restored school, now the Robert Russa Moton Museum.

During the workshop educators will:

see Mr. Stokes’ Mission, a short documentary on the struggle for equal education at the R. R. Moton High School in 1951,

hear from former students who helped integrate some of the first Virginia classrooms, and

learn about the resources available to teachers for instructing classes about this difficult era; and how to tell this important story in their communities.

Lesson plans will be handed out to teachers and the first forty registrants will receive a complimentary DVD-copy of Mr Stokes’ Mission for use in the classroom.

This workshop corresponds to the 50th-anniversary of Sweet Briar College’s successful court battle to integrate (necessitated by the restrictive will that founded the college in 1900).

The workshop will be help on Saturday, June 15th from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Registration is free for K-12 teachers, for others there is a $25 fee. Registration includes a continental breakfast, lunch and coffee break. To register and to view the full workshop program, visit the Tusculum Institute website.

This event is co-sponsored by the Tusculum Institute and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Questions? Please contact Dr. Lynn Rainville.

The planning committee of the 19th National Health Equity Research Webcast is excited to invite educators to join us for this year’s webcast titled “Early Childhood Development: Investing in Our Children and Our Future.”

For many children born into poverty, the skills they need to succeed develop more slowly than for other children. This developmental gap begins as early as 6 months of age and widens across early childhood. By the time poor children enter kindergarten, they have a second strike against them that we know as the achievement gap. Because the basic brain architecture develops before kindergarten, we know that children who get a poor start in life are likely to experience a third strike as adults: the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness gap.

Early childhood development has significant implications for education and for health and we hope to have a rich conversation with researchers and practitioners representing all fields who are interested in the optimal development of our children.

The UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Minority Health Project will present the live, interactive broadcast via Internet webcast from the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Auditiorium at the UNC School of Social Work on June 4, at 1:30 pm EDT.

Panelists include Sara Kastelic, Deputy Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association; Portia Kennel, Senior Vice President of Program Innovation for the Ounce of Prevention Fund and Executive Director of the Educare Learning Network; and Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, Director of the Office of Head Start. Khari Garvin, Director of the NC Head Start-State Collaboration Office, will moderate.

For more information and to register to view the webcast from a personal computer or as an organization in a group viewing, visit the webcast’s website.

North Carolina students in the 4th through 8th grades can free their imaginations and ask questions about Blackbeard and the wreck of his flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), during a live online stream from the Watercraft Center at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort on Friday, May 31, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. They’ll learn how researchers retrieve artifacts from the ocean floor or clean crusty cannon balls after nearly 300 years with project archaeologists and conservators.

This event is a kickoff for the Queen Anne’s Revenge‘s 2013 spring dive. Project divers will also be at the dock to demonstrate the recovery process. The joy of science and history together will be the highlight of the day through demonstrations, presentations and interactive questions from the students and answers from the experts. Schools must register by sending an email to qar@ncdcr.gov with the school’s name and contact information for the teacher(s) participating.

To spur interest, a statewide touring exhibition of artifacts from the shipwreck and interactive displays will open at the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Western office in Asheville on May 31 through July 13 before the exhibit moves on to the N.C. Transportation Museum until August 31, Historic Edenton until October 19 and the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum until December 7. Additional locations are planned in 2014.

Since exploration of the shipwreck began in 1997, approximately 280,000 artifacts have been recovered, including cannons, anchors, grenades, platters, shackles, gold dust, syringes, and much more. Students can ask about the excavation process, work environment and all about Blackbeard and pirates! Teachers and students may send their questions to qar@ncdcr.gov or submit them online at http://www.qaronline.org/ask.

The QAR ran aground near Beaufort in 1718. The QAR wreck was located in November 1996 by Intersal, Inc., with information provided to Operations Director Mike Daniel by company president Phil Masters. Archaeologists with the Underwater Archaeology Branch in the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources lead the research on this shipwreck.

This spring’s dive will culminate in the recovery of several cannons and other artifacts from the shipwreck. There will be two excavations this summer, and full recovery of artifacts is planned for 2014.

For additional information call (919) 807-7389. The Underwater Archaeology Branch and N.C.Maritime Museum are within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. For more on QAR, see http://www.qaronline.org/

For the 27th consecutive year, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center will be sponsoring its extremely popular summer biotechnology workshops for educators around the state. The Center is offering introductory-level workshops and agricultural biotechnology workshops for middle and high schools teachers. Stem cells and antibiotic resistant pathogens are other workshop topics.

A non-refundable $75 registration fee is required. Workshop participants receive free tuition; free room and board (double-occupancy; two meals per day); CEUs, and a $50 per day stipend. Only educators teaching at institutions located in North Carolina are eligible for NCBiotech workshops and support programs.

History Harvest is an open, digital archive of historical artifacts gathered from communities across the United States. The University of Nebraska – Lincoln Department of History partners with institutions and individuals within highlighted communities to collect, preserve, and share their rich histories. Advanced undergraduates lead the History Harvest project and curate and digitize these artifacts and stories. The leaders of the History Harvest project believe that our collective history is more diverse and multi-faceted than most people give credit for and that most of the history is not found in archives, historical societies, museums or libraries, but rather in the stories that ordinary people have to tell from their own experience and in the things — the objects and artifacts — that people keep and collect to tell the stories of their lives.

History Harvest will have a History Harvest Blitz Week on April 8-12, 2013. The public is invited to share feedback, suggestions, ideas, and strategies for building The History Harvest. LEARN NC will be following by Twitter (#history_harvest) and giving feedback. On Thursday, April 11, there will be a Google Hangout at 4:00pm EDT to discuss best practices in teaching with the History Harvest. The link to the hangout will be operational on that day. On Friday, April 12, join the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) Seminar “Reflection and Planning the National History Harvest” with William G. Thomas and Patrick D. Jones at 3:00pm EDT. Register at http://www.nitle.org/live/events/165-history-harvest.

For the 27th consecutive year, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center will be sponsoring its extremely popular summer biotechnology workshops for educators around the state. The Center is offering introductory-level workshops and agricultural biotechnology workshops for middle and high schools teachers. Stem cells and antibiotic resistant pathogens are other workshop topics.

A non-refundable $75 registration fee is required. Workshop participants receive free tuition; free room and board (double-occupancy; two meals per day); CEUs, and a $50 per day stipend. Only educators teaching at institutions located in North Carolina are eligible for NCBiotech workshops and support programs.

The following are American Indian events happening on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus:

The Carolina Indian Circle will host is 26th annual Pow Wow this Saturday, March 23, 2013 in Fetzer Gym on the campus of UNC. The theme of this year’s powwow is “Keeping The Faith, Through Honoring Our Traditions,” to honor the life of Faith Hedgepeth, a fellow Tar Heel and Carolina Indian Circle Member. Doors will open at 11 am and free parking will be available in the Cobb deck off Manning Drive. The Celebration is free and open to the public. The UNC American Indian Center is co-sponsoring this event.

The UNC American Indian Center is pleased to announce that Senora Lynch will serve as this year’s 2013 Elder in Residence. Mrs. Lynch is a nationally known Haliwa-Saponi potter. She has work on a permanent display at the Museum of History in Raleigh and her work is also in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. In 2004, Mrs. Lynch created the public art, “The Gift,” a mosaic walkway of light colored brick which is the University’s campus monument to American Indians. The University has a history and special relationship with Mrs. Lynch. We are fortunate to have Chancellor Holden Thorp joining us for a public talk with Mrs. Lynch on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 6:00 pm at the UNC FedEx Global Education Cemter. A reception will follow. Parking is available in the McA=Cauley Deck.

Also, don’t miss your opportunity to tour “The Gift” with artist, Senora Lynch. Mrs. Lynch will be giving a walking tour of her work, which serves as a permanent monument to American Indians at UNC. The tour will take place on the south east corner of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union on Wednesday, March 27 at 10:00 am. We hope to see you there!

For more information about these events, please send a message through the American Indian Center’s contact page.

From Bryson City to Nags Head and every region in between, this year’s North Carolina Science Festival will feature a full slate of events designed to celebrate science and to engage and inspire public audiences of all ages. This year’s festival, which runs through much of the month of April, is bigger and better than ever, with hundreds of events already planned and more being added all the time. You can check out the full list at the festival’s website, http://www.ncsciencefestival.org/, but you might want to pay particular attention to the events below, which are “can’t-miss” for educators.

Special Teacher Training Workshop at the Carolina Raptor CenterFriday, April 5 at 10:00am in Huntersville; $50 per participant
A half-day of science instruction with a focus on ecology, habitats, and ecosystems. Teachers will receive instructions and participate in hands-on science activities that can be used in their classrooms. Lesson plans and support materials will be provided in a notebook to each participant. Includes a preview of the Raptor Center’s new hands-on raptor anatomy program, focused on the biological makeup of a raptor’s body.

From the Inside Out: A Day of Dissections at Discovery PlaceSunday, April 7 at 12:00 pm in Charlotte; free with museum admission
Want to get some practice before leading a dissection with your students? This event, which takes place from noon to 5:00pm, will include dissections of sharks, frogs, and fetal pigs.

Stop-Motion AnimationThursday, April 11 at 6:00pm in Fayetteville; freeTuesday, April 16 at 3:30pm in Hope Mills; free
If you are looking for a new way for students to demonstrate their understanding of scientific concepts, consider having them create stop-motion animations! There are several software and hardware options out there for creating this type of product; these events will demonstrate one possibility available at local public libraries – the ReadyANIMATOR.

Hacker Friday: Making Cool Stuff with TechnologyFriday, April 12 at 7:00pm in Charlotte; free
If you are tired of doing the same old things with technology in your classroom, come check out the Maker Movement at Hackerspace, Charlotte’s only open community lab that incorporates elements of a machine shop, workshop, classroom, and studio. While you’re there, you can demo, build, and play with a variety of technology including compressed air rockets, 3D printers, RC cars, and computer security.

Scope Academy at NC State UniversitySaturday, April 13 at 9:00am in Raleigh; free admission ($10 for BBQ lunch)
Explore some of today’s most thought-provoking topics in chemistry, physics, math, statistics, and earth-system sciences. Enjoy classroom sessions led by NC State’s world-class faculty, followed by a keynote address by Robert Califf, MD, vice chancellor of clinical and translational research, director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute (DTMI), and professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the Duke University Medical Center. This event should be an excellent opportunity for educators to hear about current scientific research in an approachable way that can be translated into K-12 classrooms.

SYNERGY 2013 Afterschool Professional Development ConferenceApril 15-17 in Raleigh; $160 per participant; CEU credit available
Hosted by the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs, this three-day conference will focus on increasing access to high-quality STEM-based afterschool programs throughout our state. The program will include stellar STEM speakers and workshop presenters who will share their expertise and experience with afterschool providers and educators.

Critical Thinking: How to Use Science to Take Nonsense Out of Common SenseTuesday, April 16, 6:00pm in Boone; free admission
What does it mean to think like a scientist? In this event, a speaker will explain the major aspects of the critical-thinking process and how they can be used to evaluate research findings using examples from the media. Developing students’ critical thinking skills can be a challenge in any subject, but especially in science where students often think there is only one “right answer.” This even should give educators great ideas for how to foster critical thinking in their students!

North Carolina Science Festival is a two-week-long, 500-mile-wide celebration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Across the state, North Carolinians participate in science talks, lab tours, nature experiences, exhibits, performances, and other activities, hosted by all kinds of community organizations – schools, colleges, and universities, parks, libraries, museums, and businesses.

NCSF was founded in 2010 by UNC-Chapel Hill’s Morehead Planetarium and Science Center and is the first statewide science festival in the U.S. Morehead continues to produce the Festival in partnership with many sponsors and event hosts. The 2013 Festival is scheduled for April 5-21, and Time Warner Cable is the 2013 Festival Champion.

Casey Rawson is currently a doctoral student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned an MSLS in 2011. She also holds an MAT in middle grades education from the University of Louisville and is a former 6th- and 7th-grade science teacher. Her research interests focus on how school librarians can collaborate effectively with teachers in STEM content areas. She has also worked on projects related to diversity in young adult literature, the literacy needs of African American male youth, portrayals of scientists in children’s picture books, and gender schemas and IT career choices.

Have you ever wanted to immerse yourself in the study of a Native American people? Join us on Cherokee Study Abroad! Over five weeks you’ll travel from North Carolina to Oklahoma with Cherokee professors studying culture, history, and the Cherokee language. You’ll spend two weeks of instruction with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina, visit multiple sites along the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and spend an additional two weeks among the Cherokees of northeastern Oklahoma. An innovative digital humanities course, Cherokee Study Abroad will have its own interactive website that you will use to post your course blog, reflections, and photos so that others may follow your physical and intellectual journey through Cherokee country.

Eligibility

All programs are open to all undergraduate and graduate students who have completed at least two semesters in residence and have a 3.0 GPA or higher.

Funding

Financial aid can be applied to the program and need-based scholarships are available.

Courses

Cherokee People: The East (3 credits)
Cherokee People: The West (3 credits)

The program runs from May 27 through June 28, 2013. The application deadline is March 14, 2013. Visit the Burch Field Research Seminar Study Abroad website to apply.